A killer who colluded with a lying friend in a bid to beat a murder rap has found that three of the county’s top judges are not as gullible as he hoped they would be.

Moraj Semaj was one of a gang of Albanians armed with sticks who, following an earlier row, stormed into the ‘Burning Balti’ takeaway, in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, in April 2004 and savagely beat 31-year-old father, Kalvinder Singh, 31, to death.

Semaj, an illegal immigrant, went to ground for a year after the killing but finally gave himself up after the case was featured on ‘Crimewatch’. On the basis of ‘joint enterprise’, he was found guilty of the murder at Manchester Crown Court in November 2005 and jailed for life.

He has always denied the killing, insisting he went to the Burning Balti unarmed, that he had nothing to do with Mr Mr Singh’s fatal injuries and that the principal prosecution witness at his trial - referred to in court only as ‘B’ - was lying to protect himself.

Seven years after he was jailed, Semaj took his case to London’s Appeal Court where his legal team presented fresh evidence from a close friend of his, who said that ‘B’ had told him that Semaj “had nothing to do with the murder and had been caught in the middle”.

However, the President of the Queen’s Bench Division, Sir John Thomas, was unconvinced and threw out Semaj’ appeal, ruling that his friend’s testimony was riddled with lies and had ‘not a shred of credibility’.

The judge, sitting with Mr Justice Foskett and Sir Geoffrey Grigson, added that he was ’sure’ that Semaj had deliberately ‘colluded’ in his friend’s attempt to convince the court with his ‘dishonest and deceitful evidence’.

The only credible explanation, he said, was that Semaj and his friend had together ‘invented’ his account ‘as a gambit to try and find a new ground of appeal when all else had failed’.

Some background on the incident and the cases of the three men involved:

A man has been convicted of murdering a 31-year-old father-of-two at a curry house in north Manchester last April.
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Police still want to trace three men in connection with the killing, named as Emirjan Hysaj, 29 (nicknamed Yani), Alfred Kurti, 21, (Ardi) and Artan Hysaj, 28 (Taci).

A MAN has been jailed for life for being part of a savage racist attack that led to a father-of-two dying from head injuries.

Marjan Semaj, an illegal Albanian immigrant who was working in Manchester under a false name, was told he would serve a minimum of 12 years after being found guilty of the murder of Kalvinder Singh, known as Bob.

Mr Singh and two of his friends were attacked by a gang of Albanians in the Burning Balti takeaway on Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester.
They called Mr Singh’s friends white bastards and later taunted him for being with them.

Mr Singh’s party had called in at the takeaway after a night out in the city centre. There one of the Albanians began shouting at them and this led to a scuffle outside. The man and his companion ran off but returned later with a gang carrying sticks and lumps of wood.

They set about Mr Singh and his companions. Mr Sign ended up on the floor where his head was stamped upon.
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Semaj, aged 22, was identified as a man who had been working in Manchester for a bus company using another name.

…Emirjan Hysaj, 34, who denied murder, has been sentenced at Manchester Crown Court to [at] least 16 years in prison.
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Hysaj, of no fixed address, was extradited from Italy in February 2009 before being charged by police.

In November 2005, Moraj Semaj, 22, who is originally from Albania, was jailed for 12 years for killing Mr Singh.
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Police said they are still looking for Alfred Kurti, 26, nicknamed Ardi, in connection with Mr Singh’s murder.

Mr Bottomley said: “We know Alfred Kurti went to Ireland immediately after Bob’s death, but since then he could have travelled anywhere.

“We want anyone who knows of his whereabouts to get in touch and help us complete this case.”

…Emirjan Hysaj, 34, was extradited from Italy under a European arrest warrant in February 2009.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday 11 February 2010 and will serve a minimum of 16 years before he will be considered for parole.
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On Friday 9 April 2004 Singh had been enjoying a night out in Manchester with friends.

At 2.30am, having decided to get some food on the way home, Bob and his friends went into the Burning Balti takeaway restaurant on Cheetham Hill Road. They noticed a number of other people already inside the restaurant, including two men.

One of the men began shouting at one of Bob’s friends in a foreign language, believed to have been Albanian.

Two of Bob’s friends, Wayne Sykes and Roy White tried to calm the man down but ended up outside where a scuffle broke out.

Roy and another of the friends, Jaswant Singh, chased the man before walking back towards the takeaway.

On the way back they noticed a car with four men inside. Fearing it was the men from the takeaway, they ran home.

A short time later, a group of five men, all armed with sticks and pieces of wood, returned to the restaurant. One man was recognised as having been involved in the scuffle earlier.

They attacked Bob, a completely innocent bystander, along with Andrew Smith and Wayne Sykes. As Bob lay on the floor they hit him repeatedly with a piece of wood and stamped on his head.

Singh was taken by ambulance to North Manchester General Hospital suffering from head injuries, and a fractured skull and cheekbones. He was later transferred to the Intensive Care Unit at Hope Hospital where he died on Monday 26 April 2004.

Sykes was also taken to the North Manchester General Hospital after suffering a fractured skull. He is now permanently deaf in his right ear. Smith was treated for superficial injuries.

Finally, I didn’t know that UK media had reported it as a “white”-on-Asian killing. I found out from this site, run by Sikhs who didn’t fall for it:

The press were calling it a race attack by a white man on an innocent Asian man, but in reality the murderer was an Albanian, Muslim immigrant.

…The attack happened after another Albanian man in the group called Mr Singh’s friends “white [bastard]s” in a takeaway. The fact that the group were using racist taunts against the British whites in the group made no difference to the media, who then reported that this was a racist attack by a white man against an innocent Sikh! The thug left, but returned and attacked father-of-two Mr Singh, of New Moston, Greater Manchester, and his white friends. One other person in the group, a white male also suffered a fractured skull, Manchester Crown Court heard.

So a Sikh gets killed by a Muslim racist and in the brave new world of Islamic Britain the authorities play down the Islamic content. […]